Recommended by Scott Sickles

There are a bunch of friends I might not have made had the pandemic not situated us to seek one another out. Disasters, emergencies, unrest… out of global tsuris, individual bonds form and joys are found and even made.

The happy nihilist in me imagines this play in a post-human world. There is no mention of people. Without humanity, our heroes have hope.

Of course, they are wonderfully anthropomorphized! (I would go nuts with costumes and props.) The navigate their friendship of circumstance with both difficulty and care. It really is just a lovely piece!

Maybe it’s because I read this on Halloween but I found it filled with a lovely sense of darkness and menace. Brilliantly atmospheric from moment one – and how could it not be; it’s set in a theatrical props room – I couldn’t help but think something was off and something unsettling would happen.

One of the miracles of theater is that inanimate objects are brought to life all the time. That’s the gig. This passing of the screwdriver from one propmaker to his successor is filled with history, joy, and magic both light and dark!

An oft-asked question, one I’ve posed in my own work, is if R&J had survived would their love have done likewise? Would it have endured or faded? Lawing answers that question with another: why not both?

He begins at a point of high tension, so high it’s actually funny. Then a comic turn sparks a dramatic decrescendo… not only in the play but in their marriage. It’s like watching your wedding ring fall into a sewer: it happens in slow motion yet there’s nothing you can do.

A masterpiece of devastating anticlimaxes. Heartbreaking.

Whatever you’re expecting, that’s not what happens.

A kind of LETTICE AND LOVAGE on acid, a nature tour becomes quite trippy as we learn just how subjective individual perceptions of reality can be!

It’s nice to see Richter’s writing get so unabashedly weird. He clearly had fun writing this and that feelings passes through the page to the audience. You may be wondering what the hell you just watched or read, but you’ll be doing it with a smile and a furrowed brow.

This is one helluva tightrope act! The actor has lose their audience completely then win them back. With only one page, there’s no net!

Irene says some pretty unlikable things. Her great burden is that attractive men disappoint her and finding someone who’s not attracted to her seems impossible! Poor Irene!

But if anyone can find the dark cloud to mute the sting of the lightning, it’s Matthew Weaver. That the unrequiting can also be the unrequited… sometimes at the same time. Unreturned love is not always romantic in nature. Ultimately, loss is loss.

Poor Irene…

I love a good short play cycle and TALES is exceptional! Each play packs its own dramatic punch, while together they form an exquisitely detailed panorama of youthful optimism, trepidation, longing, and love between queer schoolmates of varying familiarities.

The central relationship elevates the classic nerd/jock trope (also a favorite) by intimately individuating the characters. They represent the many but are themselves unique. There’s also strong neurodivergent representation and secondary characters become protagonists of their own equally compelling Tales.

Produce them separately, together, or in various combinations! You can’t go wrong!

1 in 6 men have experienced sexual assault.
About 3% of American men—or 1 in 33—have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. (source: RAINN.org)

Baker elucidates how boyhood sexual trauma resonates over time by focusing on one man’s experience. There are the universal questions (“did I bring this on myself?”) and those specific to this character. We see how decades of anguish have laid waste to his life and the lives of those he’s tried to love. There are no gory details, nothing exploitative, just raw unvarnished truth and a bubbling rage. Powerful and urgent!

The old metaphor about Mars and Venus gets extended via an in depth examination of the facts about each: a semioticist’s dream! Eppich-Harris uses this new perspective to compare how the world seems and what we hope for it. There’s optimism in the pandemic/lockdown inspired pontification that, nearly three years later, we’d do well to hold onto.

Wonderfully written and fun to perform, it’ll make you think and take in the potential for the world around you.

I am not a “golfer.“ I play REAL golf with dinosaurs and windmills and pirate ships. Not FIELD golf!

I feel this play has vindicated my choice.

I am however modestly bougie, harbor tons of suppressed rage, and have a low frustration tolerance for the slightest inconveniences (especially when I can’t find something). So I really related to everyone in this play!

This is what my INSIDE OUT looks like!

Which clearly indicates that neither I nor John Busser are well men! But hey, sometimes you need to swing and sometimes you just need to play through.

As a tone deaf person with social anxiety, I hope I'm sitting way in the back when I see this. Bit I really Really REALLY hope I get to be there when it happens!

There's a gloriousness to the conceit that leaves plenty of room for La Maestra to play and react in ways that connect her to the audience and connect the audience to each other.

A truly grand experiment!